2011.02SmithCastingofJulian

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Histos ()

Copyright Rowland Smith

THE CASTING OF JULIAN THE APOSTATEIN THE LIKENESS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT:A TOPOS IN ANTIQUE HISTORIOGRAPHY AND

ITS MODERN ECHOES*

Fluellen: Alexander, God knows [did] kill his best friend Cleitus.

Gower: Our king is not like him in that: he never killed any of his friends.

Fluellen: It is not done well, mark you now, to take the tales out of my mouth, ere it is

made and finished. I speak but in the figures and comparisons of it

[Henry V: iv.]

Abstract. Parallels between Julian the Apostate and Alexander the Great were drawn re-

peatedly in antiquity. Although the comparison instantiates a familiar topos in the reper-toire of Roman imperial panegyrists and historiographers, in Julians case a unique com-plexity attaches to the Alexander comparison on several counts. Close reading discloseslines of influence and reaction holding between the earlier and later testimonies, and

what some of them postulate reflects an awareness of observations made about Alexan-der in Julians writings that indicate a strong interest in him on the emperors own part.Moreover, the image of Julian as an obsessive Alexander-emulator transmitted in onestrand of the ancient tradition has a modern counterpart in some scholarship which as-

cribes to him a deepening psychological inclination to identify with, or to rival, Alexan-der. This paper aims both to explicate the formation and development of the theme ofJulians likeness to Alexander as an antique literary construct, and to review the modernrepresentation of him as a passionate Alexander-emulator, arranged in four sections: I.

Introduction; II. Precedents and parallels: the likeness to Alexander theme as a literarytopos; III. The passage of the JulianAlexander comparison from rhetoric to historiogra-phy in the external testimonies: (i) Libanius; (ii) Ammianus; (iii) the Christian testimonies(Gregory Nazianzen, Philostorgius and Socrates Scholasticus); IV. Alexanders image in

Julians writings: the hypothesis of emulation reviewed.

I. Introduction

Parallels were repeatedly drawn in antiquity between the cases of Julian theApostate and Alexander the Great; attested first in rhetorical contexts dur-

ing Julians reign and shortly after his death, the practice recurs in variant

forms in late-fourth and fifth century historical narratives, pagan and Chris-tian. Per se, the comparison instantiates a familiar trope in the repertoire of

* I thank the Editors, Dr David Hunt and the anonymous referees for helpful com-ments.


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The Casting of Julian in the Likeness of Alexander

Roman imperial panegyric and historiography: a fair number of earlier em-

perors had been represented as resembling Alexander in traits of character,or as aspiring to emulate his achievements. But Julians case is quite excep-

tional for the range and intertextual relationships of the testimonies at issue,

for the variety and intensity of the associations with Alexander that they pos-tulateand for the significance some modern Julianic scholars attach to

them. Certainly, if some of the retrospective antique reports are credited,

more than casual evocation of the Alexander style was involved. In his

Monody, for instance, Julians friend and admirer Libanius mourned him asone who had taken the precedent deeply to heart: Alexander had been dear

to him, allowing him no sleep (Or. .). The image of the insomniac ad-

mirer was a fleeting aside in the speech, and studiedly derivative,

but the

underlying notion that Julian had idealized and tried to emulate Alexander

from a distance of seven centuries recurs elsewhere in Libanius and in laterhistoriographic textsand on the face of things, it attaches nicely to testi-

mony from Julian himself: at one time, he avowed, the thought of trying torival Alexander, and of failing in the attempt, had used to make him tremble(ad Them. ab). We shall return later to the detail of that avowal; just whatit implies about Alexanders exemplary standing in Julians eyes is a delicate

question. But it undeniably betokens a keen interest in Alexander that regis-

tered often in his writings, and some of the psychologizing claims subse-quently made on that score in antiquity have modern counterparts in a

strand of scholarship which judges Julian not so much interested in Alexan-der as gripped by an obsessive wish to emulate him.

In Anglophone scholarship the roots of this idea run back a century, to a

review by Norman Baynes of Seecks account of Julian in his Geschichte desUntergangs der antiken Welt;

whereas Seeck had reckoned the talk of Julians

modelling himself on Alexander a rhetorical fabrication, Baynes argued for

its basis in historical reality on the strength of details in fifth century Chris-

tian historians reports. In variant forms, the idea has figured in studies ofJulian from the s onwards. It was touched upon, albeit briefly and war-

ily, in Bowersocks biography. Bowersock looked more to Julians own tes-timony than the later reports adduced by Baynes, but he did not doubt that

Julian had adopted Alexander as one of his great modelsand in a discus-

sion of Julians Caesars, he hinted that something more than a wish to emu-

See below, p. .

Baynes, () (an excerpt from a review of Seeck, Geschichte IV (Berlin ),

first published in EHR () , disputing remarks by Seeck ibid. pp. and

). On Baynes related claim that the imitatio Alexandriascribed to Alexander Severus in

the HA discloses the Vita Alexandria work of propaganda composed in Julians reign, seeSyme () .


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late his military success was involved. The fictional Alexander in Caesars

(b) seeks to rebut the charge of harsh treatment of men he suspected of

disloyalty by insisting that he had only punished the guilty, and had re-

pented for any excessive harshness even in their cases. On Bowersocks

view, Julian was here projecting onto the figure of Alexander his own obses-sion with the problem of excessive severity; the words Alexander speaks

were obliquely expressing anxieties and resentments that Julian had come toharbour at Antioch, as his relations with the local population deteriorated.

Athanassiadi was more emphatic on the matter. She represented Julianssense of affinity with Alexander as a solipsistic notion that gripped him late

in his reign, as his hopes for a rapid pagan revival began to falter. She envis-

aged a striking change in his attitude to Alexander, a swing from bitter

criticism in the late s to a self-identifying obsession with him by the time

he set out for Persia in ; the invasion was a venture conceived in termsof the heroic exploits of Alexander, the last refuge of a ruler mesmerized by

an Alexandrian vision of Persian conquest [who] found it more and more

difficult to maintain his contact with reality and ended up totally es-tranged.

On that score, Athanassiadis picture chimed with studies of JuliansPersian campaign published by Wirth and Marcone in the late s. Mod-

ern accounts of the campaign have usually construed it as intended to last

one season and as directed to limited military and diplomatic purposes, on

the presupposition that an attempt to conquer and permanently annex all ofPersia would have been quite unfeasible in the conditions obtaining.

Wirth

argued, though, that the infeasibility of total conquest had not deterred

Julian from launching a project for open-ended campaigning and cultural

assimilation modelled on Alexanders eastern conquests; and he speculatedthat Julians death was effectively suicidea wish to fall in battle rather than

face up to the enterprises failure. Marcone, for his part, construed the cam-paign as an attempt to achieve an Alexander-like military success that would

justify Julians trust in the gods and reinvigorate his programme for a pagan

restoration.

The hypothesis that Julian envisaged the annexation and cul-tural assimilation of Persia remains controversial,

but it has been guardedly

Bowersock () , , , , with Bowersock () . I dispute this in-

terpretation ofCaes. b below, pp. .Athanassiadi[-Fowden] () (citing Baynes), .

See Ridley () , Matthews () .

Wirth () passim, esp. and ; Marcone () .

For subsequent reaffirmations of the campaigns more limited aims and intended du-ration, see below, p. and n. .


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re-argued latelyand the view that he was psychologically inclined to iden-

tify with Alexander has gained wider currency, the passing objections ofsome doubters notwithstanding.

A modern commentary on Ammianus

speaks of the fact that Julian venerated and desired to rival Alexander,

and the judgement seems gnomically endorsed in Fowdens description ofhim as one of the Alexander legends prize victims.

The imprint of Wirths

arguments is clear, too, in Rosens important recent biography of Julian: it

pictures him near the end of his reign as a Verlierer adrift in Persiaa lost

man in doomed pursuit of d[ie] Spuren Alexanders.

In what follows, I aim both to explicate Julians likeness to Alexanderas a theme in antique rhetoric and historiography, and to review the mod-

ern hypothesis that he had indeed adopted Alexander as a model whoseachievements he passionately strove to emulate. The two issues are formally

separable: what was postulated retrospectively in antiquity about Julianssense of affinity with Alexander merits study in its own right for its literaryand historical interest, irrespective of its truth or falsityand the crucial test

for the modern hypothesis lies more with Julians own testimony than thelater tradition. But in practice, the issues often overlap: some of the later tes-

timonies, even if they are fictive, reflect awareness of pertinent remarks in

his writings, and closely studied they can yield insights into the historical aswell as the legendary Julian. I shall first place the external testimonies asso-

ciation of Julian with Alexander in a broader Roman imperial setting, ob-

serving its points of contact and difference with a pre-existing cultural andliterary practice (Section II). Then (III) I pass to close discussion of the spe-

cific parallels postulated in these testimonies, with an eye to their terms ofcomparison and intended purports, their historical and literary contexts and

their intertextual relationships, and their value as evidence of the historicalreality of Alexander-imitation in Julians publicity. Lastly (IV), I review the

representation of Julian as a passionate emulator of Alexander in its ancient

and modern variants, measuring it against what Julians own writings dis-close about his interest in him. To be sure, Julians own observations and

professions on that score must themselves be read in their literary and his-torical contexts, and in the light of his reliably attested public actions; but

they remain privileged evidence of his thought and motivation.

Seager () .

For doubts, see Smith, () ; Lane Fox () , .

den Boeft et al. () . See also Franco ().

Fowden () (cf. p. : for Julian, Alexander stood not just [for] military glory

but for cultural domination).

Rosen () , and ch. (Der Verlierer)passim, esp. .


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II. Precedents and Parallels: the Likeness to AlexanderTheme as a Literary Topos

As an emblem of youthful energy and invincible martial glory, the figure of

the Alexander always held a unique glamour in antiquity, andnumerous Roman emperorsnot to mention Hellenistic kings, and the odd

late Republican magnateeither sought to evoke his style in their own pub-licity, or at least were flatteringly associated with him by contemporaries.

Rhetorical handbooks commended the likeness to Alexander theme as a

standard ploy for orators addressing emperors,

and it came easily to impe-rial biographers and historians to evoke the trope to glamorize a rulers

memory.

Such comparatio will potentially embrace any report that associates an

emperor with Alexander on any ground. Moderns seek to differentiate vari-ant connotations within the theme: a report that implies a conscious effort

on an emperors part to copy or evoke the precedent of Alexander in par-

ticular features of public style or action is said to attribute Alexander-

imitation to him; Alexander-emulation points to something deeperanimpulse to rival Alexanders achievements. In practice, though, imprecisionor allusiveness in the evidence often elides the distinctions between the cate-

gories. On a strict test, anyway, the historicity of imitation or emulation of

Alexander by a given emperor will only be conclusively established by hisown written testimony, or by clear contemporary epigraphic or numismatic

evidence.Any retrospective literary report that postulates imitatio or aemulatio

must always be appraised with an eye to its particular historical and literary

contexts; the writer could as easily be inventing or repeating fictions as re-cording facts.

In Julians case, not all of the testimonies at issue postulate any conscious

intention to copy Alexander. Of those that do so, some might only mean tosuggest occasional imitation of the Alexander style; others imply a deeper

impulse to emulate. On each count, historical and literary precedents could

On the Hellenistic precedents, see Bohm () and Stewart(); for Republican

precedents, see Weippert () and Green () . Plut. Pomp. . represents

Pompey as a conscious imitator; for modern assessments of the case, and the more am-biguous cases of Caesar and Mark Antony, see Green () , Stewart () andIsager () . For discussion of the representation of Alexander in Republican andearly imperial Latin literary contexts, see Spencer ().

Menander Rhetor, ed. Russell and Wilson (), .

Or sometimes, in the case of a bad emperor, to imply that the comparison was in-

ept: see e.g. Suetonius critical (but in my view, probably factually based) reports in Gaius

,Nero .

See Green () , whose classification is adopted here with modifications.


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colour the reports. The evocation of Alexander in imperial publicity was a

practice that reached back to the founding emperor: for a time, Augustusused a portrait-head of Alexander as his official seal (Suet.DA ); and soon

after his victory at Actium, he had personally crowned Alexanders mummy

at Alexandria with a golden diadem. The crowning emphasized Augustusclaim to Alexanders legacy in terms that flattered Greek self-esteem, but

Suetonius report of the occasion has a Roman triumphal nuance,

and apolitical calculation arguably made Augustus wary of over-fulsome imitatio in

his publicity at Rome. The brute facts of Alexanders kingship and Greek-

ness rendered him a provocatively unRoman model in traditionalists eyes;

a chauvinist strand in Italian opinion chafed at an anti-Roman subtext tothe glorification of his memory by Greeks; and under Caesars dictatorship,

Cicero had pointedly cited Alexander as an emblem of monarchic tyranny.

But these were transitory hindrances. By Trajans day, no one disputed thatRoman emperors were monarchs, and in an empire in which Greeks were

serving as senators and winning consulships and governorships, imperialpublicists could evoke Alexanders conquest of Persia to promote an image

of Romans and Greeks as fellow-Mediterraneans faced with an alien enemy

in the East.

Literary interest in the Alexander-comparison quickened at thetime, and not just in connexion with Trajan: in the extant evidence, for in-

stance, a famous story ascribing Alexander-emulation to Caesar (a story towhich Julian himself alludes) is first told by Suetonius and Plutarch;

and

Suetonius supplies our earliest testimony to Augustus veneration of themummy.

The likeness to Alexander theme always had particular appeal for

court writers and historians in connexion with emperors who contemplatedaggressive campaigns beyond the eastern frontier: Trajan, Caracalla and

Alexander Severus, were all remembered as emulators.

And from the ear-

Suet.,DA.: Augustus had pointedly declined to pass on to view the sarcophagi of

the Ptolemies, mere corpses in his eyes.

Kienast () .

Chauvinism: Livy, ..ff, with Ogilvies comm. ad loc.; Cic. Att. .., with Fears

() .

Spawforth () .

Suet.DJ and Plut. Caes. report the anecdote in variant forms, discussed in Green

() . Julians allusion (Caes. c) follows the Plutarchian version, significantly: the

doubts of Bouffartigue() notwithstanding, it is safe to assume extensive direct

reading of the Parallel Livesby Julian. By contrast, he probably never read Suetonius Lives(Plutarchs imperial biographies, now mostly lost, were an obvious alternative: see Bow-

ersock () ; Smith () , n. . Trajan: e.g. Dio .. and ., with Syme () ; Caracalla: Dio ..;

.; Ps.-Victor, Epitome., with Stewart () and Potter () ; Alexander


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lier third century onwards the appeal gained a sharper edge, inasmuch as

the Sassanian kings who now ruled Persia were reportedly seeking to restorethe old Achaemenid empire destroyed by Alexander.

Military engagements

in other spheres could still prompt the Alexander-comparison, of course: in

/, for instance, a city in Greek Asia struck Alexander-coins in honourof Claudius II (the emperor from whom Julians own dynasty would later

claim descent), to celebrate his victory over the Goths.

But when the pub-

licity of Tetrarchic and Constantinian emperors played on the theme, it was

often in connexion with the Sassanian problem. In , Diocletians re-

spectful treatment of the captured wife of King Narses was perhaps meantto evoke Alexanders courtesy towards Darius womenfolk;

in , amidst

rumours that Constantine was planning a Persian invasion, a gold medallionstruck to commemorate his Vicennalia portrayed him in the Alexander-

style;

and in , only fifteen years before Julians accession as Caesar, hiscousin Constantius II (currently at war with Shapur II) was flatteringlycompared to Alexander in the work of court-literature known to moderns as

Alexanders Itinerary.

And the theme would persist well after Julians day, in

panegyrics of the Theodosian house: the teenage emperor Honorius,

Claudian predicted, would become as great [as Alexander], lording it overthe Indians, worshipped by the Mede; around the same time, a court-

historian was drawing his attention to the example of Aurelian, scarcely dif-

ferent from Alexander.

Severus: HA Sev. Alex. ., . and , with Rsger () and Gascou

() (on an inscription from Giufi); cf. Dio .., with Millar () Appen-dix V (the Alexander-daimon abroad in Thrace inAD ).

Whether the founding Sassanid Ardashir actually held or publicized this aim in the

s is controversial: Dio .. and Herodian .. assert that he did, perhaps mislead-ingly projecting a Roman thought-pattern onto him (see Potter () ); cf. Fowden() , favouring the reality of Sassanian universalism from the start. The

Achaemenid heritage certainly featured in Sassanian propaganda by Julians day: seeAmm. Marc. .., reporting Shapur IIs letter ofAD .

Stewart () , on a coin series from Sagalassos.

Malalas p. , [= Dodgeon and Lieu () ]; cf. Plut. Alex. . For a Julianic

parallel, see Amm. Marc. .. [= A4 below]. Note also Pan. Lat.. [AD ?],

on the Alexander-like diplomacy of Maximian and Diocletian; Ps-Victor, Epit. ., on

Galerius Alexander-like serpent-parent.

War rumours: Optatianus Porfyrius, Carm. . (AD /); medallion: Euseb. VC

.., with Cameron and Hall ad loc.

Lane Fox () .

Claud. IV Cons. Hon., , (AD ), Ps.-Victor, Epit. .; cf. Them. Or..c [AD ] (Arcadius); Pan. Lat. .. (AD ) (Theodosius).


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A bald claim that ones emperor surpassed Alexanders martial prowess

might ring hollow, but nuance could circumvent the risk. Fourth centurypanegyrists amplify on the comparison to turn it to their subjects advan-

tage; they observe of Constantius, say, that he commanded a finer army

than Alexanders; of Constantine, that he made better use of a smaller oneand engaged with a more formidable enemy; of Theodosius, that he had be-

gun soldiering at a younger age.

Or one could affirm that the emperor be-

ing praised was more meritorious in the round, by picking up on the charges

levelled at Alexander by popularizing philosophers and rhetoricians in their

controversiaeand declamations: they had long argued that there were aspectsto his character and conductan inner discontentedness, vainglorious rash-

ness and arrogance, an intemperance issuing in bouts of drunken, murder-

ous ragethat rendered him a far from perfect regal exemplar.

This twist

to the likeness to Alexander theme, too, had long since become a literarytopos,

and the fourth century writers often exploit it: they invite their read-

ers to compare Alexanders drunkenness with Constantines sobriety; or to

observe that his boastfulness and cruelty thankfully found no echo in Con-stantius; or to contrast the self-centredness of his military ambitions with the

philanthropy of the brother-emperors Valens and Valentinian.

Against this background, it is no surprise that Julian in his turn was flat-

teringly compared with Alexander in rhetoric (and some have claimed, on

medallions)

at the time of his own war against Shapur II. In his case,

youthfulness added to the glamour: Constantine had been in his fifties whenrepresented in the Alexander-style on his vicennial medallion, Trajan in his

Constantius: Itinerarium Alex. (ix); Constantine: Pan. Lat. ..; Theodosius: Pan.

Lat. ...

For the bearing of Stoic ethics in this connexion (and a compelling refutation of thehypothesis of a single and uniformly hostile Stoic (or Peripatetic, or Cynic) view of

Alex.), see Brunt () , with Fears () . Stoneman () is clear

on the interplay between philosophic criticism and the Alexander exemplum in rhetorical

discourse.

See e.g. Tac. Ann. ., ostensibly reporting a comparison made soon after Ger-

manicus death. The prince is extravagantly mourned by his bereft admirers as Alexan-ders equal as a fighting soldierbut a less rashly impulsive strategist, they are made toadd, and a better man for being more even-tempered with his officers, and more self-

controlled in his private life. For recent discussion of the passage, see Gissel () .

Euseb. VC.; .); Itinerarium Al. (ix); Themistius, Orr. .a (AD ), .ab

(AD ).

Alfldi () postulated that a contorniate medallion was issued at Rome in late

/early on which a portrait-head of Julian as Alexander figured; I shall argueelsewhere (paper forthcoming) that Alfldi was quite mistaken in this particular.


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sixties when he invaded Parthia; Julian, like Alexander, enjoyed outstanding

military success on first coming to power in his early twenties, and died atthirty-one or so.

This chiming of contingent biographical details came to

matter especially for his later admirers, who had to accommodate a blatant

difference between the cases: Julians expedition had failed disastrously. Inthe wishful eyes of pagan authors who liked to picture him as a hero

snatched away in the prime of life, his death in faraway Mesopotamia at the

same age as Alexander carried a tragic resonance that could encourage a

more elaborate exercise in literary parallelism. A popular notion always per-

sisted, for instance, that Alexander had been treacherously poisoned by aMacedonian handand in the wake of Julians death, some were quick to

hint that the fatal spear had been cast by a disaffected Christian within theRoman ranks.

In principle, then, the combined force of a literary convention and someadventitious biographical similarities might suffice to explain the ancientwriters readiness to connect Julian with Alexander. But on a closer view,

the issue is more complex. The grounds of comparison adduced are dis-tinctly varied: there are significant differences of emphasis even between au-

thors who use the likeness to Alexander theme to commend Julian (and

there were also detractors who drew the comparison to a very different pur-pose). In its usual application in praise of Roman emperors, the Alexander-

comparison turned principally on the rulers claim to invincible excellence

as a military commander. Julians admirers did not neglect to praise hismerits or bravery as a general, but even in his lifetime that was not the only

point at issue, and after his death it was manifestly problematic: the starkfact was that his career had ended in a humiliating military catastrophe. Yet

that did not deter those who wrote on him with hindsight from persistingwith the comparison. Admirers would defend its aptness by picking up on

other estimable character traits traditionally ascribed to Alexanderhis

phenomenal energy and self-challenging drive, his regal generosity andchivalrous greatness of soul, his respect for philosophy and his love of

Homer. The heart of the matter, on this view, was not so much a putativewish on Julians part for military success on a scale that rivalled Alexanders

as a genuine affinity of character conjoining the pair. In the reports of

Julians detractors, this notion was to be reformulated with a subversive

Julian was / when appointed Caesar in November , and / when he died

(Amm. Marc. ..: anno aetatis altero et tricesimo). The precise year and month ofhis birth is debated (see Paschoud () (= n. , on Zos. ..): is preferable to

.

Lib. Or. . (on which see below, p. ); cf. Amm. Marc. ... Later Christian

sources warmed to the theme: the claim is well discussed in Paschoud () (= n.).


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slant: Christian writers vehemently hostile to the Apostates memory were

quite prepared to represent him as an emperor who had tried to emulateAlexanders achievements out of a sense of spiritual affinity with him; but as

they represented it, the affinity existed only as a delusion in Julians mind.

How well the retrospective antique representation of Julian as a passion-ate Alexander-emulator corresponds with Julians own testimony is a ques-

tion I defer for now; I wish first to scrutinize the external testimonies in their

own right, and their full variety. On close reading, their evidential value will

be found to lie mainly in what they disclose about Julians likeness to Alex-

ander as a developing literary construct; whether any of them does any-thing to establish the historicity of even casual Alexander-imitation by Julian

is a matter for debate.

III. The JulianAlexander Comparison from Rhetoric toHistoriography: the External Testimonies Analysed

As the evidence survives, five authors are chiefly at issue. Three (Libanius, Ammianus, and Gregory Nazianzen) were contemporaries of Julian; the

others (Philostorgius and Socrates Scholasticus) were writing in the fifth cen-tury. We can best explain the passage of Julians likeness to Alexander

from rhetoric to historiography by analysing the testimonies of each of the

five in turn: the pagan orator and the pagan historian first, then their Chris-

tian counterparts. On what grounds did they compare the two cases? Whatwere their individual presuppositions and purposes? What lines of influence,or reaction, ran within the five? Our answers to these questions will inform

our judgement of the value of those testimonies which assert or imply imita-

tion or emulation of Alexander.

III.i. Libanius

Libanius is central to our enquiry: as the evidence stands,

he was the first todraw the JulianAlexander comparison; he drew it more often, and with

See below, pp. .

Themistius and Himerius wrote panegyrics of Julian, both now lost: that of Them-

istius (attested by Lib. Epp. and ) perhaps celebrated Julians investiture as cos. IV

on Jan. ; Him. Or. (Colonna) survives only as a title. Alexanders name does not

figure in the extant Gratiarum actio (=Pan. Lat. ) of Mamertinus, delivered on Jan. .At a pinch, Mamertinus might be credited with an oblique allusion to him in a passage

praising Julians victory at Strasbourg in (Pan. Lat. ..): Nixon and Rodgers ()

n. suggest that his phrase uno proelio debellatur may recall the Alexander [qui]

rem gessit proelii unius eventu ofPan. Lat. .. (addressed to Constantine). For a later,


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more elaborate twists, than any of the later writers; and his testimony, we

shall see, has significantly coloured some of the later historiographic reports.Moreover, Libanius could claim personal friendship with Julian; he corre-

sponded with him; he was living at Antioch while Julian and his court were

based there, and some of the speeches in which he compared him to Alex-ander were speeches addressed to Julian himself at that time, or shortly af-

terwards.

On these scores, Libanius case demands particularly close atten-

tion; if he was drawing the comparison with encouragement or prompting

from the emperor or court-intimates, his testimony would constitute con-

temporary evidence of Alexander-imitation in Julians imperial publicity.Libanius addressed four speeches to Julian in the space of a year (July

May/June ). All four were composed at Antioch, in a volatile localpolitical context to which the writer, as a native and resident of the city, was

especially sensitive. Two were panegyrics commissioned by Julian, one soonafter his arrival there in July (Or. ), the other to inaugurate his consul-

ship of (Or. ); neither mentions Alexander. The third (Or. ) was anappeal addressed to Julian on behalf of a disgraced friend of the author in

autumn . The fourth, the Embassy to Julian (Or. ), written in May/June, was intended for despatch to Julian on campaign in Mesopotamia, but

was never delivered to himhe died in the interim.

The JulianAlexander

comparison figures in both of these speeches, and it recurs in two later onesthat Libanius composed to commemorate Julian over the next two years:

the briefMonody (Or. ; early ), and the longEpitaphios(Or. ; mid ).

All told, there are eight passages at issue; we shall take them in chronologi-

cal order of composition, commenting first on them individually, then ontheir significance in the round.

For ease of reference in the discussion, the

passages are labelled L, L, etc.

indisputable, application of the JulianAlexander parallel in connexion with the victoryat Strasbourg (Zosimus ..), see below, p. .

On all aspects of Libanius Julianic orations and his personal relations with the em-

peror, Wiemer () is fundamental; see also Scholl () and Swain () .

Wiemer () establishes May/June as the date of composition ofOr. .

For their composition-dates, see Wiemer () ff and ff.

I quote from Normans Loeb translation of the Julianic Orations (), occasion-ally adapted. Excluded from the list, as insignificant, is the conceit alluding to Alexander

in one of Libanius earliest letters to Julian, Ep. Frster ( Norman), addressed to him

as Constantius Caesar in faraway Gaul in AD . Congratulating Julian on his victoryat Strasbourg () and on his own (now lost) report of the battle, Libanius says that

Julians triumph will now be commemorated by his own eloquence, [whereas] Achillesneeded Homer, and Alexander a set of Titans (proverbial for their far-reaching voices).

The conceit is a topos; it rests on the popular story of Alexanders envying Achilles hisgood fortune in having the incomparable Homer to immortalize his deeds, as reported


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L = Or. . (On behalf of Aristophanes, September/October )Pleading for the restoration of the property and good name of Aristo-

phanes of Corinth, a friend condemned for bribe-taking in (by the

authority of Constantius II, not Julian), Libanius recalls a story about

Alexander: Despite his anger against Thebes, he showed respect to Pin-dars descendants because of [his admiration for] Pindars poems

Aristophanes, then, whose uncles had been philosophers, can surely

hope for helpful intervention in his case from Julian, who [reveres phi-losophers] as he would his own parents.

This passage needs only brief comment. The context is private: a speechwritten to help a friend, and not delivered in a public setting, but rather sent

to Julian to read. (His letter of reply survives (Ep. [ Bidez]): it congratu-

lates Libanius on his literary skill and promises helpbut makes no mentionof Alexander.) Insofar as L likens Julian to Alexander, it is in virtue of ashared respect for paideia, poetic or philosophic; but there is no suggestion

that he was modelling himself on Alexander. In the context, indeed, such asuggestion would be highly incongruous, because the particular action of

Alexander commended to Julians attention also inescapably evoked one of

the darkest episodes in his entire career: notwithstanding his sparing of Pin-dars descendants, Alexanders razing of Thebes and the mass-enslavement

of its inhabitants in BC were remembered in the tradition (and for that

matter, in Julians own writings) as acts of signal savagery.

The Embassythe speech dispatched to (but in the event, never received

by) Julian in Mesopotamiaoffers richer pickings; it draws the Alexander-

comparison three times. Libanius wrote the piece in May or early June

on the assumption that the Persian campaign was faring welland he wrotewith a particular purpose. Julians relationship with the populace at Antioch

had deteriorated markedly during his stay there, and he had made it plainon his departure that the city would be receiving no favours from him in fu-

ture. Libanius wrote the Embassy on the Antiochenes behalf, in an effort to

mend the breach: itappealed to Julian to give up his anger towards them.

by Arrian (Anab. ..) and Plutarch (Alex. .). Julian himself plays with this topos ca.

AD at Or. .c (flattering Constantius II for deeds far worthier than [Alexanders] of

Homers trumpet) and at Or. .a, in praise of Salutius, with a detail that echoes Ar-rians version of the story (see below, p. n. ). Likewise, fourth century biographersadduce the story to signal that the greatness of their subjects achievements must pale on

the page: it opens, e.g., Jeromes Vita Hilarionisand the HAs Vita Probi(both products of

the s).

Even basically favourable sources take a stark view of this episode: see, e.g., Plut.Alex. ..; Arr.Anab. .; cf. Jul. Caes. d.


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Rowland Smith

The three passages at issue in it (L, L and L ) need to be appraised

against that background.

L = Or. .(Embassy)

Libanius asserts that the attention and eloquence that everyone once be-stowed on other objects of renown has now devolved upon Julian; mensminds are no longer excited by stories of the Trojan War, or the Battle

of Salamis, or the deeds of Alexander in his attack upon [the Persians]:

Everyone [now] rejects all this as so much triviality, clings to the pre-

sent, and delights to hear or tell of your daring, your invasion, your

[river-]crossing

L = Or. . (Embassy)

Alexander suffered much at the hands of the orators in Athens Hewas lord of all and could have massacred them, had he wished, but in-stead he welcomed them and let them be, granting this great favour to

[the oratorpolitician] Demades. I would have cited this and manyother examples, were it not that you [Julian] have performed deeds even

more famous What characterized your philanthropy, on those occa-sions, was your patient endurance of the errors of your subjects.

L = Or. . (Embassy)

Our city [i.e. Antioch] is a city of Macedonians, [a city] of Alexan-der, who ran the same courses that you run [ ] This city [now] makes its supplication to you

If the Embassy had been delivered to Julian in Persia while he was stillalive to read it, his literary sense would have recognized and relished L forwhat it clearly wasa hyperbolic conceit to open the speech. Libanius did

no more here than what the rhetoricians handbooks advised for an oration

of this sort, and what the panegyrists of Maximian, say, or Constantine, had

done in theirs: Even Alexander now seems insignificant to me, O Emperor,Maximians had declared, when so many kings are your clients.

No one

has ever mistaken that for evidence that Maximian nurtured an obsessiveambition to rival Alexander. Ls passing image of Alexander and Julian

running the same courses might seem more suggestive: the Greek phrase,

, could bear a metaphorical sense; it might conceivably

Another consideration (see below, p. ) is also relevant: Libanius probably wrote

the Embassy with knowledge of Julians Caesars, a literary fiction in which Alexander no-

tably figures.Pan. Lat. ..; cf. ..; Euseb. VC.


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hint at passionate emulation. But a literal meaning and a minimalist inter-

pretation suit the context better: the track Julian follows is the road that runsto Persia, and to military glory.

As for L, Libanius plainly deploys the fig-

ure of the clement Alexander in much the same terms as he had in his ear-

lier On behalf of Aristophanes[=L]. But now, eight months later, it is deployedin a harsher political context; Libanius is not pleading privately for a dis-graced friend, but as a spokesman for his native city: he counsels Julian to

imitate a particular action of Alexandershis clemency to the Athenians

by acting with forbearance towards the Antiochenes. The case of Athens

adduced here allows for a kindlier image of Alexander than the case ofThebes adduced in L, but Ls underlying implication is the same: even

Alexander, whose temperament was notoriously volatile, and whose propen-

sity to deal harshly with rebellious cities and individuals suspected of disloy-

alty was common knowledge, had on this occasion spared the Athenians, asa great favour to [the orator] Demades; surely Julian, then, a ruler re-

nowned as aphilanthroposand a philosopher (Or. .), will forbear to penal-

ize the Antiochenes for their recent discourtesiesthe more readily, per-

haps, thanks to the oratory of his friend Libanius, but principally on the ba-sis of philosophy. The association of Julian with Alexander in L is thus art-

fully equivocal: like Alexander, he is a lord of all with the power to act ashe wishes, and with a cultured regard for oratory; but his philanthropic

evenness of temper sets him apart. Julian is both like and unlike Alexander,

thenand he is flattered on both counts. To an orator as experienced asLibanius, it came easily to manipulate the likeness to Alexander theme in

such ways: twenty years previously, he had elaborated on it equally readily,if less deftly, in an early panegyric that declared the emperors Constans and

Constantius more than a match for Alexander.

It remains to consider Libanius speeches of mourning for Julian, the

Monody and the Epitaphios. Julians case is compared to Alexanders twice in

each of them. They were not, to be clear, speeches composed in the imme-

diate wake of his death (June ). TheMonody was written in early , the

Epitaphios in :

when he wrote them, their author could entertain nohope that anything from Julians project for a pagan restoration could besalvaged. The four passages at issue (L, L, L and L ) can aptly be dis-cussed in two pairs (I here relax the chronological order of discussion a lit-

tle):

Wiemer () .

Or. . (to be dated to rather than : see Portmann () ; Wiemer

() ).

See n. above.


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Rowland Smith

L = Or. . (Monody)Libanius recalls Julians arrival at Antioch in July , in preparation for

his Persian campaign: He came to this city of Antiochusor if you

would have it so, of Alexander, who was dear to him and allowed him

no sleep, just as one Athenian general [Miltiades] affected another[Themistocles].

L = Or. . (Epitaphios)A description of events of early June , after Julian had withdrawn his

forces from Ctesiphon: He [Julian] conceived the idea of seeing and

passing through Arbela [i.e. Gaugamela], either with or without a battle,so that his victory would be celebrated along with the one that Alexan-

der won there He extended his view even to Hyrcania and the rivers

of India. But with the expedition now directed to that objective, andwith the army already in motion or preparing for it, one of the gods de-

terred him from it and bade him think of a return home, as Homerputs it.

These passages clearly represent Alexander as a revered exemplarwhose military achievements Julian wished to rival, and in L a specific planis indicatedbut we must allow for literary inventiveness and exaggerationin both cases. The image of the sleepless emperor in L is studiedly deriva-

tive; the mention of Athenian generals obliquely signals that it was culledfrom a story in Plutarch in which the exemplar was Miltiades, the insomniac

Themistoclesand there is perhaps a nod to Greek love-poetry too.

As

for the talk in L of a plan to march east to Indian rivers, it echoes and ex-

tends an image that had figured in an earlier speech that Libanius had com-posed soon after Julians departure from Antioch, To the Antiochenes: on

Julians Anger(Or. ).

The speech had urged the dispatch of envoys to beg

for reconciliation between Julian and the city, and had closed with a flourish

(Or. .): Shall we not send out the news to the very Choaspes that the

Antiochenes have made their plea, and receive the message back from therethat the king has been reconciled? The image envisages Julian advancingwell beyond Mesopotamia, as far as the river Choaspesand for any reader

of Libanius who knew Herodotus, the mention of that river was richly sug-

Plut. Them. .

E.g. Sappho fr. (Bergk); cf. Lib. Or.., quoting (to Julian) the lovers prayer in

Sappho (fr. Bergk) that the night may grow twice as long.

For the date of composition (late March/early April , shortly before the Embassy)

and political context, see Wiemer () ; Socr. HE. is clear that the speech wasnever publicly delivered.


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gestive. Susa, the old Achaemenid capital, lay on Choaspes banks; the Per-

sian kings of old had disdained to drink any water not drawn from itsstream; and when Aristagoras had tried to persuade the Spartans to fight the

Persians, he had represented Susa on the banks of the Choaspes as the

easternmost jewel in their empire, the Great Kings prime residence andtreasury: If you capture it, Aristagoras had told Cleomenes, your wealth

will assuredly challenge that of Zeus (Hdt. .; .). The end of Libanius

On Julians Angerenvisages Julian doing just that, as conquering all of Persia

and lording it at Susaand implicitly, of course, it evokes the celebrated

precedent of Alexander, who had marched uncontested into Susa and ac-

quired the fabulous wealth stored up in the royal treasury there (Plut. Alex.

.; Arr.Anab. ..).

But Alexander had not been content with that, and

nor is the Julian posthumously commemorated by Libanius in the Epitaphios:

L insists that only an unspecified deitys prompting of Julian to returnhome had deflected him from a firm plan to lead his army eastward toHyrcania and the rivers of India.

That claim plainly credits Julian with an

Alexander-like pothos for whatever lay beyond his graspbut it is utterly

contradicted by the facts of his armys movements as modern scholarshipreconstructs them.

Ls assertion that Julian planned to visit the battlefield

of Gaugamela is more plausible on that score; after the withdrawal from

Ctesiphon, the route the army was due to take as it marched north wouldhave brought it within thirty kilometres of the site.

But by the same token,

the story loses much of its force as evidence of obsessive emulation: no sig-nificant detour would have been entailed.

Whether Julian in fact ever aimed at total conquest and annexation of Persia is an-

other matter: see below, pp. .

Neither Plut.Alex. nor Arrian mentions the Choaspes in this (or any other) connex-

ion: the oblique nod to Herodotus at Lib. Or. . is the writers own addition. A possi-

ble complication should be noted: Arist. Meteor. ., Strabo . and Curtius ..

attest a second Choaspes, a river in the Hindu-Kush (presumably first so named byAlexanders soldiers in imitation of the Median Choaspes, and best identified with the

tributary of the Cophen that Arr. Anab. .. calls Guraeus: see Bosworth, comm. ad

loc). In principle, then, the Choaspes of Lib. Or. . might bear a double reference;

but Libanius must be thinking chiefly (probably only) of the Choaspes that flowed pastSusa; cf. Lib. Or. ., a comparable conceit explicitly naming Susa (q.v. below, n. ).

Arr. Ind. lists Indian rivers, and river-crossings are naturally a frequent motif in

Anab.: post-Susa examples figure at . (Pasitigris), . (Oxus), . (Tanais), . (Co-phen), . and . (Indus), . (Hydaspes).

For comment and bibliography on the extent of Julians aims, see below, pp.

; on his armys movements, N.B. Paschoud () n. , on Zos. ...

Paschoud, ibid.


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Rowland Smith

The last two Libanian passages at issue come from the closing sections of

theMonody and Epitaphiosrespectively:

L = Or. . (Monody)

He [Julian] who gained the victories lies in his grave, cutting short thefine and noble hopes of the world Libanius grants that many a king

had suffered a violent or premature death; he cites Homeric cases

(among them Agamemnon and Achilles), and three historical ones:[There was] Cyrus, but he had sons to succeed him; and Cambyses, but

he was mad. Alexander diedbut not by an enemys hand; and besides,

he was a man who might have given grounds for criticism. But he[Julian] who ruled over all from the west to the rising sun, whose soul

was filled with virtue, a young man still who had not yet fathered sons

he has been killed by some Achaemenid [i.e. a Persian].

L = Or. . (Epitaphios)Libanius represents the dead Julian as speaking words of comfort to hismourners: Let it not trouble you that I died in war and by the steel: so

did Leonidas and Epaminondas, and Sarpedon and Memnon, sons of

the gods. And if the shortness of time allotted me causes you grief, thenlet Alexander, [son] of Zeus, afford you consolation. Thus [Julian]

might speak, but I would add something: Fates decrees are invincible

() It was destined that things must go awry here; so Julian,though he slowed the advance of destiny and brought us happiness whilehe lived, retired to make way for the onset of a degenerate age.

These passages are vivid testimony to the readiness of some pagans, in someliterary settings, to commemorate Julian as a hero tragically lost to the

Greek cause.

In L Libanius turns the comparatio with Alexander distinctlyto Julians advantage, investing Julian with a Homeric grandeur and ac-

knowledging significant moral flaws in Alexanders character and conduct

(they are not specified, but the standard philosophic criticisms are implied); Julian, by contrast, is filled with virtue. On that score, then, the passage

studiedly avoids ascribing emulation of Alexander to Julian. So too, Li-banius at L is only prepared to draw a qualified parallel between Julians

and Alexanders deaths: both die tragically young (Julian all the more so, for

being childless); but Julians death in battle by an Achaemenid spear is

more nobly Homeric than Alexanders, which came not by an enemyshand. TheMonodys contrasting of the cases on this point is striking, in the

light of Libanius insistence in the Epitaphios, written less than a year later,

See Smith (); Swain () .


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that Julian had notbeen killed by a Persian, but by a Christian traitor within

the Roman ranks. The relevant passage in the Epitaphios() made no

explicit reference to Alexander, but an implied connexion would be obvious

to any reader familiar with the tradition that a Macedonian traitor had poi-

soned Alexander: the passage follows soon after the assertion ( = L)that Julian had planned to emulate Alexander by leading his army to Gau-gamela, and then on to India. L, then, restates Ls contrast between

Julians death in battle and Alexanders bed-ridden end at Babylon, but

adds a twist: it implies that Julian had been surreptitiously murdered by a

Christian.The underlying point of likeness at issue in L is the emperors tragically

early death. The passage affirms it with a rhetorical flourish and an artfuldetail of nomenclature: it puts the comparison into the mouth of the dead

Julian, and it makes him liken himself to Alexander, [son] of Zeus. This de-tail heralds nothing less than Julians apotheosis, about which the close ofthe Epitaphios is utterly emphatic: he has risen to the gods and lives with

them as their companion [ ], and he can be rightly prayed to forhelp against the Persians who are once again threatening the Empire.

L,

that is to say, transposes Julians likeness to Alexander into a dimension

that renders him immune to human judgements, and subject only to Fates

invincible decrees: it likens Julian to Alexander not merely as a soldier-kingwho died too soon, but as a demigod. Libanius was not the only pagan au-

thor to assert in the wake of Julians death that he had joined the gods: amemorable oracle to that effect was soon circulating in Neoplatonist cir-

cles.

But so far as we know, he was the only one to conjoin the assertion

with a parallel assimilating Julian to Alexander, son of Zeus.The literary dexterity with which Libanius applied the likeness to Alex-

ander theme to Julians case is patent. But what historical significance at-taches to his testimony in the round as evidence of actual imitatio or aemulatio

Or. . with Smith () n.

.

Eunapius, Frag. . (Blockley) preserves an oracle of Helios ostensibly addressed to

the living Julian: But having driven the Persian race headlong with your sceptre/ back toSeleucia conquered by your sword, / a fiery chariot whirled amidst storm-clouds / shalltake you to Olympus freed from your body/ and the much-endured misery of man./Then you shall come to your fathers [King Helios] hall/ of heavenly light, from which

you wandered / into the human frame of mortality. Bidez () identified this oraclewith one to which Ammianus (..) makes Julian refer on his deathbed. In Smith() n. I hedged on the point; I am now inclined to agree with Fontaine () (= Bud Amm. comm. vol. IV ad loc. [n. ]) that two separate oracles are probably

at issue. In any event, the Helios oracle transmitted in Eunapius is better dated after

Julians death: in my view, it was probably elicited, or composed, by a member of thephilosophic coterie that accompanied Julian to Persia.


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Rowland Smith

Alexandri? We should highlight, first, a significant silence. Of Libanius

Julianic Orations, only two were speeches commissioned by Julian himself

for public delivery or general publication: the panegyric that marked

Julians arrival at Antioch in July (Or. ), and the so-called Consular Ora-

tion, or Hypatikos(Or. )the panegyric composed for delivery at the cere-mony inaugurating Julians entry into his fourth consulship on New Years

Day . Neither of these speeches has figured in our discussion so far, for a

simple reason: neither contains a single mention of Alexander. That wouldseem a strange omission, if Julian was especially concerned at the time in

question to be represented in his publicity as akin to Alexanderand par-

ticularly so, in the case of the Consular Oration. By the time Libanius com-

posed it, in December , it was common knowledge that Julian was plan-ning a Persian expedition,

and the preparations for it were well advanced.

The Consular Oration reflects this context: wars with Persia, ancient and re-cent, and the assured success of the coming campaign, run through it as a

leitmotifbut all without any explicit reference to Alexander.

Why not?

On one recent view, the omission suggests that Libanius was privately in-clined to concur with those who judged the plan for a grand military inva-

sion of Persia unwisely risky, and would have much preferred Julian to take

up Shapurs offer of a settlement by diplomatic negotiations.

That is surelynot a persuasive explanation: the Consular Oration commends the notion that

Persia must be punished in like coin for earlier attacks on Roman territory,

and evinces optimism about the coming war.

But given the time and set-ting of the speech, its omission of any specific reference to Alexander is cer-tainly remarkableand it cannot have been other than deliberate: barely

See Lib. Or. ..

The Consular Oration alludes to past Persian wars, and the incipient campaign, at

, , , , , , , , , , , and , never mentioning or alluding to

Alexander. In a single passing detail (a prospective feast at Susa: ), an oblique evo-cation of the Alexandrian feast at Susa reported in Plut.Alex. . and Arr.Anab. .. (cf.

.., at Opis) might be plausibly conjectured. But if Libanius intended to make that al-lusion, it would seem markedly awkward on one score. The guiding purpose of the Alex-andrian feast, as Plutarch and Arrian saw it, was to celebrate and cement amity and in-termarriage between the Macedonian and Persian nobilities, with Greeks and Persiansinvited as fellow-guests on equal terms. Such a vision is utterly incongruous with the anti-Persian triumphalism that pervades Libanius speech as a whole, and with the particularpassage at issue; Libanius prays at that our army may feast at Susa, with Persians

serving as wine-waiters.

Scholl () .

Scholl () privileges Or. . as proof of Libanius wish for negotiations; but see

Seager () n. , citingOr. . in objection; we may add also and .For vengeance and optimism as keynotes in the Consular Oration, see Wiemer () .


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two months previously, after all, Libanius hadadduced the JulianAlexander

parallel in On behalf of Aristophanes(= L). Why not, then, in the Consular Ora-tion?

The context and tenor of that earlier parallel offer us a clue. Unlike the

panegyric, Libanius plea On behalf of Aristophaneswas written on his own ini-tiative, not to Julians commission, and was never intended for public deliv-

ery; moreover, we noticed earlier (p. ) that the particular parallel drawn init implicitly acknowledged an un-philosophic propensity to anger and

harshness in Alexanders case: granted, he had spared Pindars descendants

at Thebesbut the general population, women and children included, hadbeen sold into slavery (Arr. Anab. ..). The un-philosophic blemish may

have weighed more heavily in Libanius mind when he was writing the Con-

sular Oration, a commissioned panegyric to be delivered at Julians public in-

vestiture as consul. Libanius perhaps judged it out of place to commendAlexander as an all-round imperial exemplar in that setting, at least in the

case of Julian; his aspiration to rule on the basis of philosophy was beingpublicly praised in civic decrees and dedications at the time,

and Libanius

takes pains in the Consular Oration to commend him for it.

Conceivably, Libanius disinclination to mention Alexander in the Con-

sular Oration also owed something to an open letter composed not long pre-

viously by Julian himself, theAgainst Nilus; at one point in it, Julian sharplycriticizesAlexanders merciless treatment of his hetairoi. The letter has con-

ventionally been dated loosely towards the end of , but a recent study al-lows more precision: it was probably already published, and known to Li-

banius, by September/October at latest, well before he composed the

Consular Oration.

But whatever the particular reason for his decision, Li-

banius omitting to mention Alexander in the Consular Oration he delivered

on January tells us one thing for certain (a point that earlier scholar-

ship on Julians imitatio Alexandrihas not registered): Libanius cannot havereceived any hint of encouragement from Julian himself, or from his con-

ILS: [Iulian]o domino totius orbis, filosophi[ae] magistro (Pergamum); ibid., n. :

(Iasus).

Lib. Or. ., , , .In Nilum= Ep. ( Bidez) criticizes Alexander at a: see below, pp. . For

the conventional dating, see Bidez () (la fin de lanne ); but see now Wiemer

() , favouring composition by May/June , and Libanian knowledge of In

Nilum by Sept/Oct at latest (ibid., , with Lib. Ep. Frster ( Norman) ; cf.Lib. Or. .).


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Rowland Smith

tacts with court-intimates such as Priscus, to play upon the likeness to Alex-

ander theme in this speech; if he had, he would certainly have done so.

It is only in the Embassy, composed about six months later, in May or

early June , that Libanius first plays on the theme with any emphasis.

The Embassy was intended to flatter Julian, but it was not propaganda elic-ited by him, and at the time of writing Libanius had had no contact withhim for a good two months (Julian had set out for Persia on March, and

wrote his last letter to Libanius five days later).

The emergence of thetheme in the Embassy, then, was not dictated from on high: it reflects the au-

thors own purposes, choices and preoccupationsand the heady mood

abroad in the first weeks and months after the expedition set out. It was in

just such contexts that writers in the past had been most prone to emphasize

a rulers likeness to Alexander, and the news filtering back to Antioch re-

ported a sequence of successful engagements, crossings of great rivers andcaptures of fortresses, and (by May) an advance deep into Assyria.

There

seemed grounds for hope that the Sassanian empire would soon be brokenas decisively as the old Achaemenid empire had been by Alexander. More-

over, by the time Libanius wrote the Embassy he had surely read the satirical

fiction Caesars that Julian had composed in mid-December and the

portrayal of Alexander in that work as an honorary Roman emperor feast-ing on Olympus, and in the gods judgement a conqueror of nations so out-

standing that only the emperor Trajan could be ranked his equal as a sol-

dier, was obviously suggestive.

Caesars by no means omits reference toAlexanders faults, but its emphasis on his military excellence played to hisgreatest strength as a potential exemplar. The literary possibilities offered by

Julians treatment of Alexander in Caesarswill not have escaped Libanius

notice: when news of the campaigns early successes in Mesopotamia

reached Antioch, it will have encouraged him to pick up on Julians associa-

On Libanius contacts with Julian and his court at Antioch, the commissioning of

the Consular Oration, and the circumstances of its public delivery in Julians presence, see

Lib. Or. ., , with Wiemer () , , , .Ep. ( Bidez): the letter describes Julians impressions of places and persons en-

countered on his march, and his arrangements for the supply and transportation of histroops; it says nothing of Alexander. Nor does Libanius last letter to Julian, on which seeWiemer () .

Wiemer () ; for summary chronology of the expeditions progress, see

Dodgeon and Lieu () ; for the heady mood among Julians admirers, see below,

n. , on ILS.

I discuss the treatment of Alexander in Caesarsbelow, pp. . The composition-

date ofCaesars ( or ) has been long debated; in my view, composition at Antioch

late in is almost certain; it is surely one of the fine compositions that Libanius (Or..) credits Julian with writing there that winter.


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tion of Alexander with Trajan, and to extend the theme to embrace Julian

himself.There was also, we have seen, a pressing local issue in Libanius mind

when he wrote the Embassy. The unwelcome side to the news from Mesopo-

tamia was that Julian still nurtured his grudge against the people of Antioch:on his return, he would be shunning the city he had once so conspicuously

favoured; Tarsus, rather, would enjoy the fruits of his philanthropy.

Li-banius hoped for a reconciliation. In hailing Julian in the Embassy as an all-

conquering general who ran the same courses as Alexander, he took care

to recall the (fictional) local tradition that Antioch was Alexanders city(L);

and he shrewdly added a further term of comparison

by alluding to the celebrated story of Alexanders forbear-ance towards the Athenians in the face of their abuse and insults (L). The

story was well picked to speak to Julian, but neither it nor the Embassysim-age of Julian and Alexander as travellers on the same road constitutes per-

suasive evidence that the likeness to Alexander theme had been accordedany especially suggestive emphasis in Julians official publicity. Nor, of

course, do the passages ascribing emulation to him in the later speeches of

mourning (L, L). The Julian who strives to emulate Alexander in the Epi-taphiosand theMonody is an idealized figure shaped to appeal to a particularand limited readership; neither of the speeches at issue was ever actually de-

livered in a public context, or intended for open publication. They mourned

Julian as a lost paragon of pagan imperial virtueand for Libanius, impor-tantly, a distinctively Greek paragon, firmly incorporated within Greek

myth and thought.

That emphasis was apt in its way, inasmuch as Juliansown cultural horizon had been self-consciously Greek; he had defined him-

self publicly at Antioch as Greek by culture, and had called his political

and religious programme a defence of Hellenism.

On these counts, Li-banius was prompted to cast him as an Alexander-like hero. (L, L ). But

by the same token, Julian was fitting company, the Epitaphios insists, for

many another cultural hero of the Greeks: Socrates and Plato, Themistocles

and Pericles, Leonidas and Brasidasall figure as comparanda in the speech.

Most of these are familiar exempla in ancient historiography, of courseand

Lib. Or. .; cf. Or. ., , , reiterating what Julian had announced on quit-

ting Antioch (Lib. Or. .; Amm. Marc. ..); for his earlier favours, Misopog. d,

cd.

Cf. Lib. Or. . (local tradition); the true founder was Seleucus I, as Julian point-

edly notes atMisopog. a.

Swain () .

Misopog. c; Ep. (a Bidez) c; cf. Ep. ( Bidez) c; C. Gal. a.Or. ., , , , .


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Rowland Smith

in some of its narrative sections, the Epitaphiosmay approximate to the sort

of descriptions a historiographer might produce. But a text that pictures a

dead emperor as a god to whom one can aptly pray () is not a history:

however ardent an admirer of Alexander the historical Julian may have

been, he was assuredly not the figure that Libanius retrospectively con-structed in the Epitaphios.

III.ii. Ammianus Marcellinus

Of the historiographers who drew the JulianAlexander comparison, Am-mianus takes pride of place. Unlike Libanius, he made no claim to friend-

ship or personal acquaintance with Julian, and his account of the reign was

published nearly thirty years after Julians death.

But he wrote as a retiredofficer who had twice served in armies under his commandfirst during

Julians first campaigning season as Caesar in Gaul in , then in Persia.

Whether or not his unit marched out from Antioch with Julian on March (it could have joined the main force further east), his account of the Per-

sian campaign undoubtedly rests partly on autopsy. Until recently no onedoubted, either, that he was a native of Antioch, and acquainted with Li-

banius. Both points are now controversial,

but we can leave these questions

open; for our purposes, the essential point to observeand it may be re-garded as certainis that Ammianus, when he wrote his account of Julian,

had read Libanius Epitaphios. He had also studied and savoured some ofJulians own compositionsand one of them was Caesars.

It is safe to assume composition of the books of the Res Gestaetreating Julian in the

s, and publication of them (and most likely the whole work) at Rome ca. /: seeFontaine () I., Matthews () . On one view, the last six books of the work() were published a few years later in the s: for a review, see Sabbah ()xxxiixliii.

Both points are entailed by Lib. Ep. , written in , provided that the lettersaddresseean Antiochene Marcellinus currently living at Rome, and the author of ais identified with Ammianus Marcellinus. The identification was disputed byFornara, () , but reasserted (in my view, probably rightly) by Matthews (). Barnes () concurs with Fornara, but accepts that the case for Antio-chene origin does not rest solely on the evidence of the letter. See now Kelly () .

See Sabbah () on lempreinte de Libanius, esp. in connexion with

Amm. ... (the deathbed speech and elogium of Julian); Kelly () .

Amm. .. (= A1 below) commends Julians literary elegance; see ..; ..

and .. for his refs. to particular writings. Caesarsis not among those explicitly noted,but Kelly () has astutely identified an allusion at .. to Caes. b.


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Alexander is mentioned in connexion with Julian four times by Am-

mianus. As with Libanius, we shall itemize and comment on the passagesindividually, then review the testimony in the round. (Translations follow

the Bud editions text.)

A (= Amm. ..)

A description of Julians night-time routine while campaigning in Gaulin : It became habitual with him to divide the night into three pe-

riods of duty, one for sleep, one for affairs of state, and one for theMuses; Alexander the Great, we read, had also done this, but Julian was

far more resolute. For Alexander used to put a bronze bowl beside his

bed and hold a silver ball in his hand, with his arm extended outside thebed, so that the sound of the ball falling into the bowl would wake him

up as sleep overtook him and relaxed his muscles. But Julian, withoutany material instrument, woke up whenever he pleased. He always got

up half way through the night, and not from a downy couch or silk cov-

erlet, but from a rug and rough blanket and in these austere condi-

tions he attended diligently to his public duties. After dealing with what-

ever he thought difficult and essential, he would turn his attention to thesustenance of his intellect, and the eagerness with which he pursued the

sublime knowledge of first principles was incredible: he would runthrough all the branches of philosophy in his learned discussions, as if

seeking to feed a soul soaring to loftier levels But nor did he neglectless rarified subjects: he also attended in a measured degree to poetryand rhetoric (as is clear from the pure and dignified style of his treatises

and letters) and to the complexities of our history, domestic and foreign

Such were the nightly proofs of his pure-heartedness and virtues.

A is a comparatio of the sort that rhetors habitually practised in their decla-mations. It postulates neither imitatio nor aemulatio, but rather a natural affin-

ity: it likens Julian to Alexander explicitly for his ascetic self-discipline and

superabundant energy (with a detail that gives Julian the edge)and per-haps implicitly, for his enthusiasm for philosophy and literature (again, in

terms that would favour Julian, as a man of deeper learning).

The anecdote

of the ball-and-bowl contraption was a toposDiogenes Laertius (.) hadtold it of Aristotleand the whole passage is self-avowedly rhetorical: it oc-

curs in the praises of Julians virtues that preface Ammianus account of his

early Rhineland campaigns of an account which Ammianus de-

clares at the outset must appear, despite its faithfulness to fact, almost the

On Alexanders love of philosophy and literature, Plut Alex. ; on his asceticismand denying himself sleep, Arr.Anab. ...


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stuff of panegyric.

Alexander is only a late addition to several exemplary

names adduced more directly in these introductory praises (..): Julianhas already been declared a second Titus for his political wisdom, most

like Trajan for his glorious wars, a match for Antoninus in his clemency,

and the equal of Marcus Aurelius in his passion for philosophy (and for whatit is worth, Ammianus here says something of Marcus that he nowhere says

of Alexander: it was Marcus in emulation of whom [Julian] moulded his

own actions and character).

The three other passages at issue are shorter and can conveniently be

listed together for discussion.

A (= Amm. ..)A description of Julians advance along the Danube on his march in late

against Constantius II: He feared that the small size of his forcesmight render him contemptible to the local populace and prompt it to

oppose him. To prevent this, he devised a clever plan [He dividedhis army into three divisions; one continued along the Danube, while

the other two were sent out in different directions], in order that, being

dispersed over various parts of the country, they might give the impres-sion of a huge force and fill everywhere with alarm. This, to be sure

[enim ], was what Alexander and many skilful generals afterwards haddone, when the occasion demanded it.

A (= Amm. ..)A report of the division of the spoils after the capture of the fortress of

Maiozamalcha (mid-May ) in the course of the Persian expedition:

The booty was divided according to the estimate of merit and hard ser-

vice But as for the lovely young girls taken captive (and the women ofPersia are renowned for their beauty), Julian forbore to touch or even

look at a single one of them, acting in the likeness of Alexander andScipio Africanus [Alexandrum imitatus et Africanum], who had avoided such

conduct, lest they should succumb to desire after having shown them-selves unconquered [invictos] by hardship.

A (= Amm. ..)

From Ammianus closing elogium on Julian: There are many manifest

proofs of his generosity [liberalitas] , [among them] the fact that he

never had a desire to increase his wealth, which he thought was better

secured in the hands of its present ownersa view he would express by

Amm. Marc. ..: ad laudativam paene materiem pertinebit.

For discussion of this notion, Hunt () ; and see below, pp. .


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remarking occasionally [aliquotiens ] that Alexander the Great, when

asked where his treasures were, gave the kindly answer: In [the hands

of] my friends.

These passages, too, offer slim pickings, if one is seeking evidence of an ef-fort on Julians part to evoke the precedent of Alexander in public style oraction,or an impulse to rival or surpass his fame or achievements. In A,the comparison is drawn not just with Alexander, but many other skilful

generals, and again without any suggestion of conscious imitatio: the simi-

larity is represented as an observation by the author, not a precedent inJulians own mind.A is more ambiguous on this score: Julians self-denyingreaction to the captured Persian beauties clearly evokes the famous story of

Alexanders chivalrous treatment of Darius wife and daughters after Issus,

and the Latin imitatuscould certainly connote conscious copying;

but if so,the passage in this case would need to connote copying of Scipio Africanusas much as of Alexander.

On balance, imitatus is probably better construed

here to mean simply that Julian, as Ammianus saw it, had acted in likemanner to these two: Alexander and Scipio Africanus served as stockexem-

pla of resistance to sexual temptation, and had been paired (and indeed

compared) in this connexion by earlier writers whom Ammianus is knownto have read.

We are left withA, the report that Julian occasionally (aliquotiens) used

to quote a saying attributed to Alexander commending generosity in a king:his treasury lay in [the hands of his] friends (apud amicos ). Julian will cer-

tainly have known and quite likely had quoted that saying: it was a prover-

bial commonplace.

That said, the particular context to Ammianus report

deserves a word: it occurs in the lengthy elogium (or necrology) of Julian(..), in which Ammianus returns to and develops the panegyrical

Plut.Alex. ; Arr.Anab. ., .; cf. Diocletians possible imitatio in his treatment of

Narses wife, noted above at p. . But we should note that the Persian beauties offered

to Julian were not royal women: Ammianus story aims chiefly to stress his asceticism,not his chivalry, and its detail that Julian was unwilling even to lay eyes on the women

clearly echoes Plut. Alex. . (on whose nuanced imagery of Alexanders sophrosyn, see

Stadter () ).

cf. Pol. ..; Livy .. Scipio himself has been credited with imitatio Alexandri: for

recent views, see Spencer (), (agnostic); Tis () ch. passim (sceptical).

See e.g. Front. ..; Aulus Gellius ... Ammianus allusion to Scipio may have

drawn on the latter, or else directly on the story at Pol. ...

Theon (nd c. AD), Chria , ap.Stobaeus , cites the Greek version; cf. Them. Or.

.c (AD ), citing it in praise of Theodosius; and implicitly Arr. Anab. .. (the

speech at Opis). Julian surely echoes the proverb in praising Alexanders generosity tofriends at Or. .c; and also at Caes. ab, noting Alexander Severus lack of generosity.


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Rowland Smith

themes noted in connexion with A. The elogium offers Ammianus closingverdict on Julians reign under eight conventional headings: his possession of

the philosophic virtues of moderation, wisdom, justice and courage; then his

martial expertise, his authority, his success, and finally his generosity.

Within this schema, Ammianus might easily have cited the Alexander-parallel in the sections devoted to courage, martial expertise and authority,

and perhaps also under the headingmoderatio (reprising the abstinence andself-denial commended inA andA). But that is not what Ammianus does:the parallel only occursand only very obliquely, by citation of a proverb

as a coda to the proofs of Julians regal generosity; conspicuously, there is

no attempt in the elogium to emphasise Julians likeness to Alexander as a

soldier of phenomenal energy and courage.In the elogium of Julian, then, Ammianus recourse to the likeness to

Alexander theme is surprisingly restrainedand recent scholarship has ar-gued that the point holds also for his deployment of the theme in his narra-

tive of Julians reign in general.

Certainly, none of the four passages we

have itemized does anything to establish that Alexander had had an espe-cially privileged place in Julians heart or publicity; and given the generous

length of Ammianus account of Julians career, and the centrality of the

Persian campaign within his account, four citations of Alexanders nameseems a modest total: the parallel could have been adduced far more often,

if Ammianus had so wished. His reticence in his narrative of the Persian

campaign (.; ..) seems especially telling. Ammianus ascribesacts of personal bravery to Julian at the sieges of Pirisabora and Maiozamal-

cha that cried out to be compared with celebrated stories told of Alexan-

der;

and his description (..) of a military trick devised by Julian at Ana-

tha to give an exaggerated impression of his armys size could easily haveprompted a reprise of the JulianAlexander parallel that Ammianus had

drawn earlier, in connexion with Julians Danubian advance of (.. =

A ). But the brute fact is that the allusion to Alexanders courtesy towardsDarius women (.. = A ) is the only point in Ammianus narrative of

the Persian campaign at which the JulianAlexander parallel is drawn.

Szidat () ; Lane Fox () .

Amm. ..; .. (with .., set near Ctesiphon); cf., e.g., Plut.,Alex. .

(rescue of Phoenix), . (besieging the Mallians).

Strictly speaking, .. (= A3) it is the only point at which Alexanders name arises

in any connexion in the narrative of the campaign: it occurs otherwise only in the long

excursus on Persia (...) that punctuates the narrative at the point of the expedi-tions entry into Assyria, in passing references to his exploits and death in Persia: Amm.

Marc. .. (Alex.s death in Babylon); ibid. (his alleged death-bed testament); ibid. (his victory at Gaugamela); see Fontaine () I., n. . These mentions may


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Unlike Libanius, who had credited Julian with a plan to lead his army to

Gaugamela and continue fighting his way east as far as the Indus in emula-tion of Alexander [L], Ammianus nowhere explicitly compares his military

objectives in invading Persia with those of Alexander.

Alexander is absent, too, in Ammianus narrative of what in retrospectwas patently the greatest military success in Julians entire career: his victory

over the Alamanni at Strasbourg in . Ammianus reckoned this anachievement that deserved a panegyric (..), and he recounted the battle

at greater length than any other in his history (..)but withoutevoking the likeness to Alexander theme. The omission in this case has a

particular interest, given the likelihood that the History of Eunapius was oneof the sources that Ammianus consulted when he wrote his account of the

battle.

Only fragments of Eunapius work survive, but Zosimus account of

Julian is reported by Photius to have simply summarized that of Eunapius,and the one point at which the JulianAlexander parallel occurs in Zosimus

is precisely in his report of the Battle of Strasbourg: it was a victory no lessgreat, he says, than the battle of Alexander against Darius.

If this detail

derives from Eunapius history (which is probable), and if Ammianus con-

sulted that history (which is possible), it would follow that Ammianus knewan account of Julians victory at Strasbourg in which the likeness to Alex-

ander theme was adduced, but chose nonetheless not to adduce it in hisown account of the battle.

Compared to the terms in which Libanius drew the JulianAlexanderparallel in the Monody and Epitaphios, Ammianus recourse to it seems dis-

tinctly muted. Various reasons for this could be offered. Notwithstanding his

remark at .., Ammianus was writing narrative history, not posthumouspanegyric; and he was writing it at Rome for a Latin-reading publicand

from the viewpoint of a former soldier. Libanius, by contrast, typified thecivilian ethos, and his own cultural horizons (and likewise those of his stu-

dents and anticipated readership) were emphatically Greek.

Perhaps the

later date of composition is relevant, too: Ammianus was writing a good

twenty years after Libanius composed his Epitaphios: on one view, he may

obliquely imply the Alexander-parallels tragic aptness in Julians case; but they do notexplicitly draw it.

The hypothesis that the first edition of Eunapius was published in time to serve as a

source for Ammianus was disputed by Paschoud (e.g. Paschoud [] xviii, and also atPaschoud []), but is still commended by, e.g. Matthews () , , n. and byBarnes () . Ammianus had perhaps also read a (now lost) account of the battle

composed by Julian himself, attested by Eunapius F (Blockley) and Lib. Ep. Nor-man = Forster (see above, n. ).

Zos. ..: referring either to Issus or Gaugamela.

Liebeschuetz () f., ; Swain () .


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Rowland Smith

have been reacting against a comparison which he judged had been made

too much of by others who had written on Julian since his death.

That isquite likely truebut it need not entail that Ammianus saw no substantial

likeness in the cases. There are points in his narrative at which Ammianus

does not cite Alexanders name, but nonetheless ascribes moods and motivesto Julian in language that obliquely evokes characteristics traditionally asso-

ciated with Alexander. Shortly before the expedition falters at Ctesiphon,

we find Ammianus Julian hoping for so much from a fortune which had

never yet failed him that he frequently dared many enterprises bordering on

rashness (..); at Ctesiphon itself, his keen and constant longing for thatwhich lay beyond his grasp [avida semper ad ulteriora cupiditas] prompts him to

rebuke his cautious generals as laggards whose love of ease would deprive

him of Persian realms already all but won (..). There are inescapable

echoes in these phrases of the Alexander of the ancient literary tradition: his yearning for unending glory and conquesthis was a common-place; his critics liked to argue that his military success had owed more to hisluck than to his intrinsic virtues; and even his admirers acknowledged a

reckless streak in his generalship.

So too, as the day of his death ap-

proaches, Ammianus Julian succumbs to nightmares and portents. Hedreams that the Genius of Rome has deserted him, and is stupefied by the

sight of a blazing star (..): there is surely an echo here of Plutarchs Alexander in his last days, who [became] convinced that he had lost the

gods favour and fell prey to superstition, interpret[ing] every strange orunusual occurrence, even the most trivial, as a portent.

And some of these

tacit evocations surely recur subliminally in the strained defence of Julians

expedition that Ammianus offers at the very close of the elogium (..):exculpating him from the charge that he had rashly kindled a Persian war,

Ammianus declares that his miraculous speed and energy (mira dictu celeritate

pari studio ) would indeed have successfully set the East to rights again

(orientem recrearet ), if only the decrees of Heaven had accorded with his

plans. Rashness here is consigned to the sidelines, as if it were irrelevant to

the practical outcome, merely the residue of a miraculous energy that wouldinevitably have triumphed if the divine will had granted Julian a longer pe-

riod of good fortune: sotto voce, Ammianus evokes the ghost of a luckier king

Lane Fox () , with implicit reference to Christian writers, among them Greg-

ory Nazianzen (on whom see below, pp. ); but pagan authors such as Libanius orEunapius might be relevant too.

On Alexanderspothos, see (still) Ehrenberg () , with e.g. Arr. Anab. .;

., Plut. Alex. .; on luck, Plut. De Alex. Magni fortuna aut virtute. (rebutting the

critics); on his strategic recklessness: cf. Tac.Ann. ..

Plut.Alex. ., .; cf. Arr.Anab. ..


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endowed with miraculous energybut he does so very delicately, because to

have actually named Alexander here could only have served to underlinethe collapse of the JulianAlexander parallel in a basic and crucial connex-

ion. Ammianus reticence in drawing the parallel in the elogium, that is to

say, is bound up with the basic problem that he faced in narrating Juliansreign. Ammianus intended his account of Julian to be the centre-piece of his

history; he was assuredly a man of heroic standing (..). But the ultimatetest of an emperors worth for readers of imperial historiography was mili-

tary success against Romes enemies, and Julians Persian campaign hadfailed disastrously. It is not hard, then, to guess why Ammianus adduced the

likeness to Alexander theme so sparsely and circumspectly in his narrative

of Julians reign. To have emphasized it would have risked highlighting an

aspect to the likeness that Ammianus strongly sensed, but strongly wished

to gloss over: as a commander, Julian had acted recklessly on occasions; sohad Alexander, toobut in Julians case, the recklessness had not ultimately

been redeemed by military success.

III.iii: The Christian Testimonies: Gregory Nazianzen,Philostorgius and Socrates Scholasticus

Inasmuch as the purpose of the Alexander-comparison was usually to com-mend and glamorize an emperor, one might expect Christian accounts of

Julian to eschew it. But some Christian writers vehemently hostile to Juliansmemory do adduce it, slanting it to their own purposes; and on one viewtheir testimonies offe

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